Well, just found these forums, and thought id share one of my biggest project cars with you guys. it gets tons of intereste and looks in many different ways every way i post it. Figured you'd like to see it too. so heres a quick catch up of whats been happening to it over the last year with lots and lots of pictures!!!

Let me start it off with a photoshopped teaser pic, to draw your interest and make you want to keep reading!

As far as looks:
Basically, im going to jump on this lame "JDM" fad that everyone is so into right now. Its going to be clean shaven, shaved front and rear side marker lights, shaved key hole, delete the rear bumper and roll pan it smooth, delete the front bumper. and make a 1 piece removable fiberglass front end molded around the Frount mount intercooler. Slammed super low, on some bronze Wheels, with a very pretty white paint job. Not going to be a plain basic white, it will have a nice twist to it. Should look pretty clean when im done. As you will see in the pictures later, this was not my first intentions... but it is now. ill explain more later.

Suspension Drivetrain and such:
As i said, its going to be dumped on its nuts. should sit only a few inches off the ground, (sits about 5" right now) it will set on a custom coil over set up, Custom sway bars, and custom strut bars. I am converting it to 4x100 lug pattern with 4 wheel disc brake set up. Gonna go fast, gotta stop fast. Since its going to be a "race car" it will have removable traction bars to help with hooking up, and a lsd tranny. of course, a set of drag slicks for those trac days.

Engine:
Boosted and built DOHC D16a1. yes dohc D series. not B. for those of you (seems like most everyone i talk too) yes there is a such thing as a dohc d series honda motor. it comes from a 86-89 integra, its the same motor as a ZC. My motor will go threw 3 stages. Stock, Lightly Boosted, BUILT and boosted. Im starting off with the stock motor just to get things running and driving and all the other kinks worked out. then almost immediatly ill jumped to stage 2 of the build and i will boost the stock motor it on 6 pounds. This will allow me to to work out the kinks of making the turbo fit, start tuning the suspesion and getting everything race ready. After thats all done, the Build process will begin, with:
Stock Block bored .025 over
Stock Crank
stock head port and Polished.
JGE valve train set
Eagle Rods
Endyn Pistons
Web Camshafts
Skunk2 CamGears
APR hardware
Custom Block Girdle
and boosted on 1.6 Bar (23 psi)

Misc:
Its pretty much going to be a drag car, so roll cage, racing buckets, no back seat, fuel cell, things like that. But it will be street legal, so it will have the bare minimum to keep it that way. with a few things like projector hid head lights, LED tail lights, Custom dash and gauges. And im sure lots other things that will pop up in the build.

This might be of some interest to you guys too. The Build cost of this car as of today.

So lets get the pictures started. and i know i will write a LOT. but if you actually read it, it should answer any questions you have, i do pretty good about explaining things.

So this is how i found it, one late rainy night.

I bought it, and finally brought it home on march 11th, 2007 for 200 bucks. This is how it sat when i unloaded it off the trailer.

after a little tear down i started getting ready to pull the stock motor, and take it down to my shop. which by the way stock motor is a 1.2L with a max crank HP of about 50... lol yes 50. top speed maybe 80 MPH!!! 1/4 mile in prob 28+ seconds haha.

The new motor i got for free. more than doubling the horse power of this car just from the stock motor swap...

after quite some time i made a lot of progress on it. got it all primered, the cracked and broken windshield removed. the engine bay hacked up and bent and made room for the d16 to fit in. while i was cleaning out the shop to make more room i took some pics while it was sitting out side in some good light.

one thing i wanted to do was make a fiberglass dash to lighten it up some. to make it easy i was just going to mold it off the stock dash. (you can see it half finished in the picture above)

here it is mostly finished... still pretty ruff, you can see a lot of flaws in it. but it came quite a ways. and no i didnt make the gauge cluster part or the air vents, i used the stock ones.

So this is where i said i changed my mind on teh body styling. i was going to go for a totally custom off the wall show car. but i guess my mind changed...

So at first i picked up this bumper off a 04 Subaru Forester. This is it pictured on my GF's 79 civic project. (she is what sparked the inspiration of this project) (dont worry her daily driver is a 02 wrx wagon thanks to me lol)

as you can see its HUGE! so after a LOT of chopping it up, fitting, fibgerglassing. this is what it ammounted too..

it just wasnt working for me.... didnt like the looks, even though the photoshop looked awesome, i didnt like it in person.

i then decided to work on the rear bumper since the front was a failure.

So after finishing the rear bumper. i went threw a couple more, then found one i thought i was going to like for good this time. 05 Scion TC.

chopping and fitting.

nearly finished.... just needed some more sanding, and some body like shaping and it was done.

anyway. last trip i made to my friends collision repair shop, (when i picked up the tc bumper) i also picked up this beauty. a 2006 Subaru Legacy dash.

so after removing the air bag, chopping it up to fit in this tiny car, here it is.

and as luck would have it, its even lighter weight than my fiberglass dash. to fix ill apply one thing layer of fiberglass over it to fix all the cuts and holes, and then wrap it in vinyl. This dash actually works a LOT better for what i want, looks, function, weight, its absolutly perfect and was exactly what i wanted. just wait till its done, you will understand where im coming from.

so some time in here i took about a 3 month break from working on this thing. my baby daughter was born, i was pretty broke, and had no time for this car... so it sat... and sat and sat. after coming back to the shop i started looking at it, and after seriously just staring at it for prob a good hour, i decided it just totally was NOT what i wanted to do to this classic. so i spent the next hour ripping off a good 100 bucks in fiberglass materials and countless hours of work.... about that time someone needed a set of stock springs. so i ripped mine out and let it sit on the struts.

HAHA

Gotta love these skinny tires... even completely dumped and at FULL turn, they still have 1" of clearance before any rubbing is going to happen!! lol.

the car is soooo low that we had to lift the car up by hand to get the lift out from under it, because it hit the ground before the struts bottomed out lol. good thing this car is light weight haha.

so i ordered some coil springs for it to fabricate to fit into the stock struts.

This is just going to be a temporary set up. when i have 1000 bucks to blow on a full set of adjustable coil overs i will and fabricate them into this car.... but for now. these will work.

So after wondering what i was going to do with my front end now. i found this car...

i decided i wanted to do some similar... i liked the nice clean look, kinda stock looking but still clean. a nice "JDM" look to it. but my problem is im boosting. i need a front mount intercooler. So after spending about an hour drawing out sketchs on paper and running ideas threw my head, i had a plan. and went to work.

First i needed a front mount intercooler to build around. well no way in hell would i pay hundreds of dollars for one just to ruin in the messy build process, so i got the dimensions of the one i wanted. and made it out of boxes. here it is

27x5.5x2.5

perfect size for this car.

so i got to work on making the mold for the front end. ( i appologize for the next few pictures. i brought my camera to the shop, but left my memory card at home... so i had to use my camera phone)

Then i started filling the gaps with expanding foam (this is what you use to make the mold, dont look at me like im crazy, its a very well known and common used trick in the fiberglass world)

while i was waiting for the foam to expand and dry you can see i found a 20 year old can of silver spray paint and painted the intercooler for a more "realistic" look. i get bored easy haha.

but im a ****ing idiot and forgot to shake the can.... so it came out all stringy and didnt expand very well....

After shaking the can a little more..... worked a little better.

so after basically wasting 1 hole can of foam, this was the results. (yes i primered it because i was extremely bored again.

From the back side.

So since i messed up the first can, it wasnt enough, so i had to run back to home depot and buy another freaking can. i shook it the entire way back to the shop. and started spraying more foam. it came out sooooo much thicker and fluffyier, like 4 times the size than before. i felt like a idiot.....

Well. heres what the car looked like after the good can of foam went on.

expanded a little bit more than i wanted, but no big deal, just cut it down.

so i went to work cutting.... was slicing off perfect how it should. then i got down to the stuff that was from the first can, it just turned to a sticky goop, didnt foam up at all. so i had to rip it all out and start over again!. i was sooo effin pissed, but before i ripped all that **** out i sprayed it really quick and took a pic just to get an idea of where it was going. to see how i was liking it...

So that catches you guys up to current. i got super busy with another project for a customer, and mine had to set aside, but im going to get back to working on it veerrry soon. my plan is to have it running by this summer. So check back for updates very soon! and feel free to ask questions.. thanks.

and of course the photoshop at the VERY top of all these post is the current goal of what i hope it turns out to look like.

I don't know what the law is by you, but here you are required to have turn signals on the front and side for it to be street legal, just something to keep in mind.
I also don't care for the front bumper. when looking at the photochop, the bottom front of the bumper needs to be tucked under/in a little more, and the same for the sides of the bumper. It just all needs to tuck a little further under the car, and the corners need to be rounded off a little bit. I think the intercooler needs to follow the same angle as/be parallel to/ the grille.
Of course that is just my opinion, and I am not much of a JDM fan, so maybe that is the look you are looking for

I also think the back bumper is a little too tall for your car, it goes too far down for a relatively short car, It kind of looks like it would be a giant scoop under your car. The least you could do is have side skirts that go down just as far. Again, just my opinion

oh believe me i know lol. soon as i can come up with a spare $300 bucks though, this thing is really gonna come to life quite quick.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cliffy

Great car! Love the decal on the front bumper, too!

haha yeah, the finishing touches theres quite a few more ill have to put on the windows and shit, they are funny as hell, and fit the car perfect. just like the JDM as FCK one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dvdrose18

I don't know what the law is by you, but here you are required to have turn signals on the front and side for it to be street legal, just something to keep in mind.
I also don't care for the front bumper. when looking at the photochop, the bottom front of the bumper needs to be tucked under/in a little more, and the same for the sides of the bumper. It just all needs to tuck a little further under the car, and the corners need to be rounded off a little bit. I think the intercooler needs to follow the same angle as/be parallel to/ the grille.
Of course that is just my opinion, and I am not much of a JDM fan, so maybe that is the look you are looking for

I also think the back bumper is a little too tall for your car, it goes too far down for a relatively short car, It kind of looks like it would be a giant scoop under your car. The least you could do is have side skirts that go down just as far. Again, just my opinion

Good luck though, sounds like a very unusual project

as for turn signals, they will be build into the head lights and tail lights. which around here is perfectly legal. it doesnt need them on the sides, just front and rear. and be viewable from an angle (like at a 4 way intersection) which basically the whole front of the car is viewable front a 4 way. so ill be covered there.

i know its hard to do a good photoshop and have it look exactly what its going to be like in real life. if you knew the real body lines of the car, and how the bottom and corners flow, i dont think you'd be saying that. i understand how the chop looks pretty flat and straight down, but it will roll under. give it time you will see.

again the shitty photoshop. the intercooler follows the grill perfectly in real life. sits right under it, is the same width, flush, and so on. i know what your talking about, and the finish product will be just that. dont exspect the photoshop to me 100% acurate. its just to get an idea.

any maybe you missed it, but the back bumper came off with the front. there is not going to be any hacked up fiberglass bumpers any more. if you look at the rear of the car you will see the hole that was there from the stock metal bumper beams, im going to do a roll pan affect and fill that in flush, like you would do on a truck when removing the bumper. the only fiberglass is going to be the removable front end, from the grill down. so it gives me easy access to the turbo for motor work.

spent some time re-foaming, once again, and this is the last time! it worked this time, the front end. so waiting for it to cure over night, and tomorrow night ill go cut it down, and sand it into shape.

the grill is going to be attached to the one piece front end, and used to help hold it on, its hard to explain what im going to do. but you will see what i mean with progress. it will make sense then.

k so heres the next thing ive been toying with... and i finally commited!
the start of the RHD conversion. Cant get any more JDM than that!

the best part, is this is going to be CAKE work. its almost a bolt in, well more like Weld in swap. the car is even marked where it would go on a jdm car. the only real fabrication im going to have to do is with the pedals which is going to be a snap. this conversion should cost me less than 15 bucks, and even thats just for a little bit of scrap metal to fab up for the pedal linkages and mounting.

Gotta cut this side out. and then of course weld up the hole its going to leave.

and move it right here. you can see the circle of where it would go on a JDM car, even the hole in the cross member is drilled for the steering linkage already.

from the inside, again you can see the circle where its suppose to be.

then cut off the steering colum brace and move it over, this one isnt point blank obvious where its suppose to go, so ill kind a have to wing it. but it will work.